Saturday, 19 June 2010

Mester Jakel/transitivism

9 comments:

"Religion was totally forbidden, and it has always interested me. At the same time I'm a neurotic person and my biggest problem in life is control or the lack of control. […] As a child, you create all kinds of rituals to maintain control. I was very scared of the atom bomb, so every night when I went to bed I had to perform all these rituals to save the world. And from a psychological point of view, religion is a continuation of these childhood rituals, which are there to prevent everything from reverting back to chaos." And (on p. 116), von Trier explains the consequences of his unusual upbringing for his adult and professional life: "I think that these ideas about control and chaos stem from my upbringing, which was unbelievably lax. There were no rules whatsoever, which creates a lot of problems, like deciding when you should go to the dentist, because everything's up to you yourself. And in that case, you end up not getting things done and that creates a lot of anxiety. I also had to force myself to do my homework, because no one told me when I had to do it. When there's nobody to enforce discipline upon you, then you have to enforce it from within. That, in return, has made me incredibly disciplined at my work today—I work all the time. But at the same time it's a tremendous source of anxiety that everything is your decision. Of course this has given me great faith in my own creativity—almost like a christening gift."

In 1989, von Trier's mother revealed on her deathbed that the man who he thought was his father was not, and that she had had a tryst with her former employer, a man named Fritz Michael Hartmann, who descended from a long line of Roman Catholic classical musicians, in order to give her son "artistic genes". After four awkward meetings with his real father, the man refused further contact.[7] The revelations led von Trier to attempt to "erase" the connections with his stepfather by converting to Catholicism, and to rework his filmmaking into a style emphasizing "honesty".[3]

perverted creativity:he would make "his mother" suffer again and againhe would see "his father" in every ruler

(transitivisme) Transitivism, a phenomenon first discovered by Charlotte Bühler (see E, 5), refers to a special kind of IDENTIFICATION often observed in the behaviour of small children. For example a child can hit another child of the same age on the left side of his face, and then touch the right side of his own face and cry in imagined pain. For Lacan, transitivism illustrates the confusion of ego and other which is inherent in imaginary identification. The INVERSION (right to left) is further evidence of the function of the mirror. Transitivism is also evident in paranoia, in which attack and counter-attack are bound together ‘in an absolute equivalence’ (Lacan, 1951b:16).

Alter ego/twinship needs refer to the desire in early development to feel alikeness to other human beings.[9] Freud had early noted that 'The idea of the "double"...sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which holds sway in the mind of the child.'[22] Lacan highlighted 'the mirror stage...of a normal transitivism. The child who strikes another says that he has been struck; the child who sees another fall, cries.'[23] In 1960, 'Arlow observed, "The existence of another individual who is a reflection of the self brings the experience of twinship in line with the psychology of the double, of the mirror image and of the double".'[24]

Kohut pointed out that 'fantasies, referring to a relationship with such an alter ego or twin (or conscious wishes for such a relationship) are frequently encountered in the analysis of narcissistic personalities', and termed their transference activation 'the alter-ego transference or the twinship.'[25]

As development continues, so a greater degree of difference from others can be accepted.[9]